Tailor-Made Ruthenium-Triphos Catalysts for the Selective Homogeneous Hydrogenation of Lactams

The development of a tailored tridentate ligand enabled the synthesis of a molecular ruthenium-triphos catalyst, eliminating dimerization as the major deactivation pathway. The novel catalyst design showed strongly increased performance and facilitated the hydrogenation of highly challenging lactam substrates with unprecedented activity and selectivity.